By Greg Baum
Austin Robertson junior kicked 60 goals in 18 games for South Melbourne in 1966. It would have won him the Coleman medal the previous year, if there was one. It would have won him the Coleman in two of the past three seasons in our era.
That single season was the sum total of Robertson’s VFL career. He’d loved playing under captain-coach Bob Skilton, but the next year, Skilton was replaced by Alan Miller. “He wanted a stay-at-home full-forward,” Robertson said in an ABC interview in 2017.
Austin Robertson at South Melbourne.Credit: Fairfax Media.
That was not Robertson, so he went home to Perth. “If I’d stayed, it might have changed my life dramatically,” he said. “I might never have come back to Perth.”
It’s hard to imagine how Robertson’s life could have been more dramatic. In 12 seasons with Subiaco, broken only by that one with South, Robertson kicked a WAFL record 1211 goals at an average of nearly five, including six centuries, all this in an era of fullbacks with, let’s say, few scruples.
He’s remembered still for his lightning leads and pinpoint accuracy, mostly using the still newish-fangled drop-punt. In 2015, he was inducted into the Australian Football Hall of Fame.
Post-footy, Robertson, “Ocker” to all, became a lieutenant to Kerry Packer in founding his revolutionary World Series Cricket. His raffish name, along with John Cornell’s, grew to be synonymous with that upheaval. In time, he would regard that rather than his prodigious footy career as the achievement of his life.
Austin Robertson with Max Walker during World Series Cricket.Credit: Fairfax Media.
Robertson’s father, Austin senior, was a South Melbourne star and one-time world champion professional sprinter who re-settled in Perth. Robertson junior remembered sleeping with a footy so he could smell the leather, “particularly when it was new”. He also loved cricket and swimming and at 15 made the state water polo team.
But footy had him. In his mind, he was always kicking goals. “I might see two lamp posts, and there’s a bit of gap, and I will imagine going back and kicking the ball through the lamp posts,” he said at his Hall of Fame induction. He was 72! A gate, a wall, an angle: all still set his mind racing. “The problem today is that it’s a simple thing that’s been made too difficult,” he said. “Fifty per cent is in the head.”
While playing footy, Robertson got a job as a copy boy on the Perth Daily News, starting on the same day as cadets Cornell and Mike Willesee. He and Cornell grew thick, opening a wine bar in East Perth and in time working together for Packer and as part of the Paul Hogan franchise and Crocodile Dundee phenomenon. Cornell sidelined as the dopey sidekick Strop on The Paul Hogan Show.
Austin Robertson, World Series Cricket director.Credit: Fairfax Media.
Over decades, Robertson managed dozens of sportspeople, beginning with Rod Marsh and Dennis Lillee and including Shane Warne and more recently Bernard Tomic. It was his friendship with Lillee that led him into the WSC adventure. He moved to Sydney and for two years shared an apartment with Richie Benaud.
Robertson and Cornell secretly signed up most of the original 35-strong WSC troupe. At one point, that entailed a rush trip to the West Indies, accompanied by a go-getting young Packer lawyer, one Malcolm Turnbull. Robertson said the signature of Tony Greig was pivotal, because it opened the door to a full cohort of internationals.
But he always maintained that if not for Lillee and their friendship, there would have been no WSC. “It wouldn’t have happened at that time. It wouldn’t have happened with Packer,” he said in 2017. “It would have happened 10 or 15 years down the track, probably in India.”
In later halcyon days during the making of Crocodile Dundee, Robertson rented the home of Joan Collins in Los Angeles. He had a rich life and a wealth of stories. But WSC, which gained so much for cricketers, earned him only $10,000, he said.
Robertson was married three times, later in life fell on financial hard times, and sometimes yearned to kick figurative goals again. “I want to make a comeback,” he said in a 2013 West Australian interview. “I want to be relevant again. It’s easy to be irrelevant when you’re older.”
Austin Robertson with Doug Walters and Ian Chappell at his book launch.
He said little about WSC until publishing his Cricket Outlaws in 2017. He continued to work as a sportswriter for local newspapers in Perth, but more recently, he worried that he had CTE, and urged all footballers to wear helmets.
Dramatic as his life was, Robertson doubtlessly was still idly sizing up his next shot when he suddenly died this week, aged 80.
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